Saturday, March 01, 2008

The Times newspaper boasts some of the best food & wine critics around - Gordon Ramsay, Heston Blumental, the wonderful restaurant critic A.A.Gill, and one of my personal favourites, Jeremy Clarkson (albeit that he writes about cars!).

In their wine section they have the highly regarded Jane MacQuitty, who is a very serious journalist to say the least. So, at a recent London tasting I jumped out from behind our table and thrust a glass of our Albariño in her direction (such is my confidence in our wine). Thankfully she agreed with my opinion, and we are now thrilled to appear in this weekends paper as one of her 'Star Buys'.

2005 Albariño - Rias Baixas, Bodega Castro Martin.

"Albariño is an unusual Iberian white grape you have to fork out for, but in this Spanish edition, the lively, floral, lime zest and lemon blossom-charged palate is easily worth the price asked".

There are two things that are significant to me about her comments. Firstly, she comments about our wine's good value for money (in keeping with Tom Stevenson's rating in his recent book). And secondly, in January 2008, she is writing about our 2005 wine - further proof, if it were needed, of my own opinion about the ageing potential of our Albariños.